Out of all furniture needs, the chair may be of most importance. While the majority of other forms (except the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair should be used here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to further types such as a bench and sofa, which should be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly defined.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or aesthetic object; it was historically a symbol of social placement. From the historical royal courts there were important signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to squat on a stool. Since the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has become an identifier of superior standing, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher floor.
As its furniture form, the chair can be employed for a variety of variations. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has derived new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms have perfected to fit to different human needs. Due to its unique association with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when in use. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and tested by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter require each other. Thus the various limbs of the chair were labeled according to the elements of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic role of your chair is to support a human body, its worth is evaluated basically from how completely it does fulfill this practical use. In the build of the chair, the chair maker is bound with the static law and principal measurements. Under these limitations, however, the chair designer has great freedom.
The history of the chair extends over an era of several thousand years. There existed peoples that had iconic chair types, as expressive of the principal work in the industries of skill and creativity. Out of these civilisations, special note must be made of ancient Egypt and Greece; China; Spain and The Netherlands in the 17th century; England in the 18th century; and France in the 18th century during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of skilled craft, are now a finding from tomb discoveries. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs designed akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular construction was made. There was in our knowledge no notable difference from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The main change existed in the level of ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was created as an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the stool persevered during much later times. But the stool then also was created for the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the construction of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats were formed of wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then appeared somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not as any ancient fossil still existing but seen in a large amount of pictorial objects. The iconic kind is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area near Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs were shown. These curved legs were presumed to be crafted with bent wood and were likely to have been put under huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely stable and were clearly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek style; existing statues of seated Romans show designs of a more heavyset and apparently rather more crudely built klismos. Both features, the light and the heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist period. The klismos design is used in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special brands of notable individuality in Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as well as chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of images and works of art had been preserved, showing the interiors and exteriors of Chinese homes and the furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a number of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing resemblance to images of past chairs.
Just like in Egypt, two chair designs persisted in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been constructed both with or without arms however never without a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one kind, it has been found, the stiles are slightly curved by the arms to conform to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). Together, the three areas are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the design of this back splat had an introduction for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that merely to a restricted extent embolden corner joints (and then were loose as a result) represent a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or has rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and had on occasion a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs likely were allowed only for elderly individuals, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decorative parts are combined in a style that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual parts do not appear to have been fixed together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and held in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art show a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same period, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is seen in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of fairly thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and more expensive items may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popularised in large parts of the Continent, had no parallel in England. Prior to 1740, the most commonly used wood was walnut; thereafter, and for the rest of the century, it was mahogany. Walnut, though beautiful in hue, was soft and therefore less suited to wood carving than to rounded, curving forms. Outer surfaces, such as the back and seat frame, were usually veneered. During the walnut period, highly overstuffed armchairs, covered with leather or embroidered material, were also developed. The best upholstery of this period is precisely and firmly modelled and accentuated by braiding or tacks. When imports of mahogany became common, no specifically new chair designs appeared, but the character of the woodwork changed. Mahogany, having a firmer, closer grain, could be cut thinner, which meant that individual parts of the chair could be more slender in shape. Mahogany also lent itself better to carving than walnut. Carving was concentrated more on the arms and back than on the legs, which as a rule were straight and smooth with chamfered (bevelled) edges and molding. There was a wealth of variety in chairback designs, featuring elegant, pierced, vase-shaped splats or two upright posts connected by horizontal slats (ladderback).
Alongside the French Rococo chair and the best English chairs in walnut and mahogany, the stick-back chair was relatively unaffected by the stylistic changes of the day. Originally a medieval form, known, for example, from paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and still found in mid-20th century in the churches and inns of southern Europe, the stick-back chair (in all of its variations) consists basically of a solid, saddle-shaped seat into which the legs, back staves, and possibly the armrests are directly mortised. This typically peasant form underwent a renewal and a process of refinement in England and America during the 18th century. Under the name Windsor chair (a term that seems to have been used for the first time in 1731) or Philadelphia chair, it became popular and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
Within the Neoclassical period, no basic changes took place in chair forms, but legs became straight and dimensions lighter. Backs in the shape of classical vases replaced the fanciful outlines of the Rococo period. Around 1800, freely executed imitations of Greek and Roman chairs of the klismos type, with curved legs and backrest, appeared. French chairs of the Empire period, executed in dark mahogany and embellished with ornate bronze mounts, created a ponderous effect.
In cheaper versions of inferior workmanship, bourgeois chairs of the 19th century carried on the traditions of the 17th and 18th centuries. The only real innovations were the bentwood (wood that has been bent and shaped) chairs in beech that became popular all over the world and were still made in the 20th century. Around 1900 the continental Art Nouveau and Jugendstil styles (French and German styles characterized by organic foliate forms, sinuous lines, and non-geometric forms), and the Arts and Crafts movement in England (established by the English poet and decorator William Morris to reintroduce idealized standards of medieval craftsmanship), gave rise to original chair designs by Eugène Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaudí in Spain, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Scotland. These new furniture styles did not exercise wide, let alone decisive, influence. The Art Nouveau chairs designed by the French architect Hector Guimard, for example, are collector’s pieces, but his name is known to a broader public only because of his fanciful entrances to the Paris Métro.
Modern
After World War I, the Bauhaus school in Germany became a creative centre for revolutionary thinking, resulting, for example, in tubular steel chairs designed by the architects Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and others. During World War II, the aircraft industry accelerated the development of laminated wood and molded plastic furniture. The dominant chair forms of this period go back to designs by Alvar Aalto, Bruno Mathsson, and Charles and Ray Eames. Rapid technical developments, in conjunction with an ever-increasing interest in human-factors engineering, or ergonomics, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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